Alium, page 42
The mangled body melted suddenly into foul sludge, massing in a bubbling mess of twisting bone and ragged white flesh; up shot anew the tall spindly form unscathed as before, and the eyes bellowed awful, affectless laughter through the prison. “Fool!” they said in a thousand tones. “I am the night.” The sanguar dispersed into a cloud of black smoke, rushing forward all at once like a storm of evil breath. But now Wygram joined the fray, thrusting forward her great wings, and a sudden wind rushed roaring through the cavern, ripping at the smoke, holding it now as it fought, gaining materiality, now too heavy to blow away; this time a huge hairless rat fell splat on the stone, its translucent tail whipping, its maw slobbering and gibbering, through serrated yellow teeth all sticking in different directions.
The rat uncorked its fat haunches, hurtling through the stale air, but Byron was thankful for the larger target, and the taste of blood hastened his blade. He brought the great dull edge crashing down at the moment the hideous whiskers just tickled his face, and the beast was thrown back by the strength and speed of the blow twitching and moaning, a vast gash in its face and chest. The fissure folded, boiled black; all dissolved into a mess of grey sick. Up rose the first form of Azanak standing easily. Blood slopped from Byron’s wounds, and a network of black veins now showed up along his neck and down his arms, so that he came down on one knee and coughed up bile. His skin had grown eerily pale, the green of his eye shaded with mist.
“Your strength wanes, Novare.”
“I’m only getting started,” spat the mercenary, driving his knee against the floor, rising into a knightly stance once more.
Still Ogwold clung helplessly to the stiff frame of Videre, the two of them slumped together on the flagstones as empty of passion as any of the mewling husks that littered the prison. But as he huddled there with his friend so quickly deceased, the glaze over his troubled eyes slowly cleared, and he beheld as out of a world of shadows a murky vision of the mercenary Byron in a battle to the death, bleeding, broken, yet unrelenting, so ready to face his own end for the sake of Videre and Ogwold who were all but strangers to him, of Wygram who he had only just met. It was the inviolable word of the mercenary so displayed, the promise that truly would not break, that flowed up from the deeps of dark defeat like a rising current, that finally brought the ogre swimming to the surface, and when he broke into consciousness of the vital horror around him, it was with three precise passions: honour Videre; repay Byron; defend yourself.
Only more dense as was the pain of loss now so clearly realized, within that packed core was a motile heat, a ferocious and glorious warmth maddening like a volcano long dormant, for now he burned to avenge the fair cat that had taken him so far from Epherem. As Byron now fought, so too had she carried him with unshakable devotion over the desert, placed herself ready to die before the knights of Occultash, and battled so ferociously the Eyeless as to be coveted by their King, when easily she might have escaped. In those vile tunnels, it was Videre as much as the ruthless Byron who taught him at last, that there are some who must fall. Now there was no difficulty in seeing the evil that was Azanak, and the fate that creature deserved. So he stood unnoticed and solemn as the hideous amorphous mass of bone and flesh was hurled away by Byron’s sword, laughing arrogantly once again. He conjured his strength into the Fonsolis, the flesh gripping, twisting, responding in turn with a resolve equally powered, and formed in the voice of his spirit, out from the ancestral language of his partner that word which he had learned in his vision of kelp. Yet there was more, for never so adamantly had he requested the service of the plant. Even as Byron wiped the blood from his face and prepared for the next exchange, a new word arose from the shapeless song of the elder plant in concert with the first; and Ogwold cried out: “Iliofos! Ampeligio!”
With a rippling burst, as stars appear billionfold in galactic singularity, the numberless pores of the Fonsolis surged all together blinding white, featureless and pure as the day star itself compressed into the smiling shoulder of a young Nogofod, the flare of its aura flashing into a blazing arm slender and true as a bending ray of sun, dawn upon its fingertips. Azanak leapt back hissing, for his skin had at once begun to bubble and steam, and all but his despicable eyes were lost in the glare. His first thought was to escape, for the immortal sanguar’s mind was dominated ever by fear of death. But for Ogwold’s second word, the creature might have found safety, turning seamlessly into a winged smoke flying for the upper floor more swiftly even than he had moved before. Yet where “Iliofos” brought the light, “Ampeligio” shaped it, conjuring the form of the vines which so many times had plunged into the surface of Altum seeking nutrients, which had helped Ogwold so easily to ascend the great tree of Hesflet. Seeing them together entwined as a great whip, so it was—a whip—of pure sunlight. With a resounding crack the cord of light snapped through the formless thing and there came the screams of a million souls dragged to Carcerem, pulling the true form of the sanguar entrapped in materiality out from the smoke and flinging it wailing upon the stone.
If “Iliofos” had shown the ogre his gills, “Ampeligio” was their first taste of the sea, so that now, naturally as when long ago he fell from the dock in Epherem and beheld in simultaneity all the skills of swimming he was born to know, so too did the language of the Fonsolis blossom throughout his spirit—here long it had been grown—like a vast world formerly hidden from the eyes, now revealed in all the totality which was the given right of its partner to feel. Here like the effortless motions of underwater flight came a grand sequence of words, a lexicon of subtle truths through which the ogre now shared each his impulse with the plant so wrapped within his being. And so, together, they bellowed through shared lips and lungs in a booming voice of power, one new word to seal the demon in an inescapable, unending day, the pure whip of sun snaking back from that scorned, quivering hide, gathering into a brighter and denser luminance as though all of its light were withdrawn into the very seed of the shoulder: “Kandesmi!” As through a window flung open in the wall of Caelare’s palace, a radiant beam of pure white sunlight shot straight and true in an unerring eternal shaft through the heart of Azanak, if he had one, and widening consumed his form entire. The horrible wailing of the sanguar was cut short so utterly in that brilliance that it seemed already a distant nightmare, for Azanak, Lord of the Mire, was utterly annihilated.
The light faded swiftly as it had come. Ogwold whispered this time only in his mind the word “Protagi,” and the Fonsolis was again his arm, in likeness of the other, again green and hale, the merciless sunlight retreating into each its pores as infinite eyes turned back to sleep. Wygram lay down on the floor and snorted decisively. Byron too slumped over and flopped back, immense sword thudding singly against the stone, for the black poison had warped him horribly. His skin was nearly white, he wheezed with pain, and blood poured with wicked speed and smoothness from the gashes in his side and chest. All around was heard the dry plopping of other bodies, endless bodies, even the distant patter of those husks stored in the floors above falling masterless and dead, at last, as they had been for many years.
The soft noise echoed up into silence high above them, and they could only imagine how many more continued to fall in the furthest chambers. Wygram said, “They are free.”
Ogwold was bent over the dying mercenary, unable to lose another companion. His grey hand held tight against the worst of the bleed, and the Fonsolis he pressed over the black, evil wounds, but as opposing forces there seemed an invisible impediment between that cursed flesh and the tough green of his palm. He could feel in his own veins and heart a revulsion and weakness in the presence of the insidious bile, such as the plant felt when it was near to open flames. “I’m so sorry Byron,” he murmured shakily. “I was afraid. I… should have done something.”
“He can only be healed by the light of the sun,” the jewelled snout of Wygram inched over the mercenary as if to smell him.
His eye scanned her coldly. “I’ll be all right.” He choked up a flow of blood. “Just get me outside, ogre.”
“Fos!” Ogwold called, but no light came from the Fonsolis. He stared at the dark hand where only minutes ago had come such blinding radiance.
Byron smirked eerily. “Used it all, huh?” Without a word Ogwold picked up the mercenary like a sack of tutum and hung him over his grey shoulder. “Wait… oh, thank you,” said Byron as the ogre picked up his father’s sword.
With one last look at the body of Videre, Ogwold said, “I’ll be back. Wygram, you coming?”
The Euphran only tilted her head, the silvery tassels hanging to one side, the blue scales pale in the light of the sphere as it left her to join the ogre, but as Ogwold ascended the endless staircase he could hear her powerful talons moving closer against the stone. Blood darkened the ogre’s white cloak as he walked carefully and smoothly as was possible for so hulking a creature as he was, and if there was any pain in the process for Byron it seemed no more than he already suffered. Either that, or the mercenary refused to admit he was dying. At last they came up through the confounding halls of the castle proper, and found the light of the door still ajar, as though in Azanak’s mind even drawing so close to close off the day would have to wait for night. So it was that they stumbled out of the labyrinth and breathed the moisture heavy air of the mire once again.
The sun was just setting over the misted mountains. Ogwold set the mercenary down against the high black wall, and those low golden rays at last reached his pale flesh. First the darkness left his eye, then colour touched his flesh. He coughed up a horrible plume of black gunk, and then the sick veins began, slowly, to retreat. The wounds did not close, and the blood did not stop flowing, yet Ogwold remembered that the first thanks he had ever given the Fonsolis was for drinking blood from his own wound, so he willed that his hand widen and grow over the gashes already lighter and less blackened. He hesitated at first, recalling that repelling force from before, but the tentative feelings of the plant soon fled, and with its own debt to the mercenary came the word for healing: “Kalliergo.” He held the grown Fonsolis over Byron’s wounds, expanding all around him in healing, cocooning roots, and soon enough blood ceased to fall onto the stone. But the silent sun-drenched man sat there long holding the gashes closed while he rested.
“I am sorry for being so useless,” said Ogwold sitting beside him. “It was your bravery that brought me to my senses, Byron.”
“That bastard might have actually killed me.”
Ogwold exchanged a funny glance with Wygram, who coming last out of the great doorway had watched with fascination everything he’d done with the Fonsolis.
“Who knows,” she said. “To last even a moment under the power of Azanak is a feat few mortals have accomplished. Two thousand years I have been his prisoner, and never have I seen such resistance.”
“Maybe he used to be stronger,” Ogwold implored.
“The sanguar grows more powerful with each drop of blood that it drinks. The older the mightier. That is the greatest gift of their immortality, but also the worst of their torment if they come to loathe their undead state, which is inevitable, for the longer that curse persists, the more inescapable is its hold.”
“You are quite the loremaster, Wygram,” said Ogwold.
The Euphran set her silver-whiskered chin upon her claws. “I will help you. No being has ever done such a goodness to my heart, and you are even a son of the Great Mother. I will fly you and your partner as far as I can, which is very near to Zenidow.” She looked up with laughter in her great icy eyes. “…but you will not make for a light load.”
“Thank you, wise one.” More like Ogdof than ever before did Ogwold appear in his solemn speech. “If you will wait, I must retrieve the body of my friend from this awful place.” He lumbered back into the suffocating dark without a moment’s hesitation.
He returned only as dusk settled over the great lakes, the enormous cat heavy in his quaking arms, lurching wordless down the darkling stair and out into the marsh, where he dug up a deep grave for his oldest partner in this journey, and lowered her body carefully down into the warm, wet earth. Before the soft mound filled in he arranged the grasses of the mire in a kind of crown, and made a long prayer to Caelare, willing Videre’s spirit to soar among the stars, and find some place in the ether where others like her ranged and played. Then he slowly returned to the tall black gate where Byron and the Euphran had waited.
The mercenary had ripped a sheet from his cloak and wrapped it snugly, but not too tightly around the deep wounds, which had greatly healed under the influence of the Fonsolis, but not entirely. Wygram gazed off into the sky that she had not seen in millennia, as if she could do so forever. The return to Fonslad was simple on the wings of Wygram. She flew them easily above the mist so that the whole valley spilled everywhere in a sea of vapour, and soon, with the sinking sun, they touched down just beyond the village. Wygram was wise to obscure herself deep in the wood while Ogwold and Byron camped on the fringes of the city, having no silver left to spare at the inn.
*
Three days more the company stayed in Fonslad recovering, and little is there to tell of that time, for it was a period of peace and warmth before a long journey. Byron’s wounds healed greatly, for he spent part of each day with the Fonsolis against his skin. By the morning of the second day he was able to swing his sword without splitting the horrible gashes anew, and he trained—quite against the insistence of Ogwold—all that day in the woods. He did not ask the ogre at all about his true relationship with Caelare, though he had heard Wygram well.
On the third day they met Wygram at the fringe of the forest. Coming out of the trees as from some phosphorescent myth, her scales turned transforming iridescent blues as the sun bent against her hide. Her great wings unfurled as in greeting, free of the tight spaces of the trees and the shackles of Azanak. Each larger than her body, webbed as with a diaphanous blue canvas, the delicate bones bore at their threefold elbows sharp spires of crystal shining like the blue depths of her eyes.
Byron was last to arrive, brow slick with sweat, for he had been training since before the sun had touched the trees, and now it was noon. Approaching like some haggard bandit out of the shadows, he laid Ogdof’s old, massive sword in the grass before Ogwold with an awkward but practised sense of ceremony. “I’ve chosen a name for your father’s blade, if I can call it my own,” he said gruffly.
“I could never wield it as well as you.” Ogwold smiled oafishly.
Byron grinned as well, and it was not a bloodthirsty madness there on his face, but a pure and simple expression of joy. “It is called Azanog!” He suddenly unsheathed the blade and swept it up into the clear sky. “A weapon of the Nogofod which bit the flesh of Azanak.”
“That’s a fine name,” Wygram boomed. Her voice differed greatly from that which she used many days ago, when she was weak. Now she was hearty and full, and her cheeks bloomed with azure health. Byron and Ogwold bound their possessions to her scaly back. The mercenary sat in front, wrapping his arms around her long neck, and Ogwold behind him could not contain his excitement, shouting out so that his deep ogre voice thrummed through the forest, and all manner of birds burst from the trees.
With one great unfurling of wings Wygram exploded into the air, and the blast of wind removed many a hat from the onlooking villagers. Strong were her wingbeats, slow and gradual though the land unfolded beneath them at speeds before unrealized. Swiftly the trees thinned, the forest passed in an instant, but they could not see the marshland, for there was only an endless blanket of white fog, though Ogwold swore he glimpsed the black thorns of the highest spires of Azanak’s awful fortress.
They winged low over the solid white wash in a noiseless oblivion. Acres of mist surged featureless in all directions, the ragged, ethereal range ahead an unmoving, unchanging horizon, yet suddenly leaping in detail—one crag, one swath of forest—so close and drawing nearer. Like a great fabric out-flung the canopy of vapour broke streaming up against the titanic blue mountains at the end of the valley, along whose vast feet Wygram rose steep and true, banking between their dazzling peaks, where no fog could reach. The Fonsolis gloried in its closeness to the sun.
Chapter XXIII
For Pivwood
Pale in the far axe-flare of Feox, Elts’ limpid eyes and prickly shock of hair floated after that single source of vision as it was a lonely star lost in artificial night. Seeking a sky long promised them both, though the bearer of that flame walked with the rigid composure of an automaton, its distant follower’s exhausted tails hardly lifted from the rugose cavern rock. Still she stumbled hastily as Zelor beside her.
The sorcerer’s broken voice had not troubled the tomb-stale air in days. Oiled sinks seemed his eyes, turning inward against the singular friction of his will to advance. Charred was his face with woe; scorched was his mind by its many tenants; ever did the cinders of stolen souls smoulder on his breath. Though still, when they rested, he sat in meditation—stiffened his pointed ears, extended his tails like vanes unto the slightest subterranean winds—he was hardly the man who sought peace in the first.
Yet it was just as Elts accepted her final solitude, the reality of the horrible premonitions that haunted her now so frequently—evil tentacles bursting from the back of the sorcerer, crimson light blaring in the total black of his stare—that a cold draft shivered their cloaks, and he spoke at last, cutting the dead silence in the very tone which she had come to trust in Ardua.
